In a striking display of federal resolve against health care fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice and prosecutors across several states have announced a series of indictments and convictions in cases totaling more than $2 billion in alleged and proven fraudulent billings. These cases—spanning from California to Kentucky and Texas—shine a harsh spotlight on the sophisticated tactics used by fraudsters and the mounting pressure on federal agencies to safeguard public health funds.
Between May 13 and June 1, 2026, the Justice Department’s Health Care Fraud Unit secured six federal jury trial convictions involving more than $1.1 billion in health care fraud losses, according to a DOJ press release issued June 4. The convictions, which took place in federal courtrooms in Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, and Nashville, covered a wide spectrum of fraud schemes, each more elaborate than the last.
One of the most staggering cases involved Brett Blackman, founder and CEO of HealthSplash, whose platform DMERx industrialized Medicare fraud on a national scale. Prosecutors revealed that Blackman’s operation generated over $1 billion in false Medicare billings, with the government paying out more than $450 million for unnecessary orthotic braces. Blackman’s scheme utilized foreign call centers to aggressively target elderly Medicare beneficiaries, pressuring them into accepting braces they didn’t need. The scam went further, connecting these leads to telemedicine companies that took illegal kickbacks in exchange for signing fraudulent physician orders, falsely certifying that doctors had examined patients they never saw.
In another case, Dr. Violetta Mailyan, a California physician, was identified through data analytics as a statistical outlier. According to the DOJ, she had received more Medicare payments for Botox injections than any other physician in the country. Investigators discovered that Mailyan billed for thousands of Botox injections that were never administered—including on days when she was vacationing in Cabo, Maui, and Las Vegas. She even billed for a patient who was incarcerated at the time of the supposed treatment. The verdict resulted in the forfeiture of luxury assets, including a Tesla Model X, a Tesla Cybertruck, brokerage accounts valued at over $7.3 million, and four California properties.
Ruby Scott, a Michigan home health care agency owner, orchestrated a scheme involving the corruption of a hospital discharge nurse to access patient records without consent. Scott transmitted over $130,000 in illegal kickbacks through CashApp, PayPal, checks, and cash, using stolen patient profiles to bill Medicare for services that were never provided. The fraudulent activity led to losses exceeding $1.6 million, with false certifications that patients were homebound and had been evaluated by physicians who never examined them.
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, Tony Brown-Arkah ran a clinic that was nominally dedicated to substance abuse treatment but, in reality, functioned as a vehicle for drug diversion and large-scale fraud against Medicare and Medicaid. The clinic prescribed Suboxone, a Schedule III narcotic, and directed patients to a van outside the clinic to sell prescriptions for cash. Brown-Arkah billed for office visits he never conducted and for services that were never rendered, with total fraud losses exceeding $52 million. Undercover video captured him offering illegal cash kickbacks to a confidential source.
Olga Popovych managed a network of Brooklyn physical therapy clinics that paid cash kickbacks to ambulette drivers to drum up patient referrals. She falsified medical records to indicate that licensed physical therapists had treated patients on days those therapists were absent. From 2018 to 2020, Medicare paid these clinics more than $8 million based on fabricated records.
In Tennessee, Heather Marks, an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner, prescribed nearly a million opioid pills to almost 1,000 patients at a pain clinic between September 2016 and May 2018. Despite obvious signs that some patients were abusing or selling the drugs, Marks continued to prescribe opioids, putting patients at risk of overdose and fueling the opioid epidemic.
The Health Care Fraud Unit’s integrated team model—pairing prosecutors with data analysts, investigators, and paralegals—has proven effective. In 2026 alone, the unit completed nine trials, all resulting in convictions, and since 2007, the National Fraud Enforcement Division’s Health Care Strike Force program has charged more than 6,200 defendants responsible for over $45 billion in fraudulent billings. According to the DOJ, the recent string of convictions ties the unit’s record for the number of trials resulting in conviction within a single month, but the complexity and breadth of these cases set a new bar for sophistication in health care fraud enforcement.
But the crackdown isn’t limited to convictions. On June 18, 2026, prosecutors in Houston indicted Marizel Yukee, a Nevada nurse practitioner, in what they described as a sprawling Medicare and TRICARE fraud scheme built around medically unnecessary wound grafts, fake documentation, and illegal kickbacks. According to the indictment, Yukee and her co-conspirators submitted over $906 million in false claims and received more than $297 million in payments from Medicare and TRICARE between October 2023 and April 2026.
Yukee owned and controlled four wound care companies operating across Texas, Nevada, California, and Hawaii. Prosecutors allege that her clinics billed far above actual product costs, retroactively altered medical records to justify unnecessary treatments, and paid kickbacks for patient referrals. The indictment states that some patients, including those in hospice care, received unnecessary allografts and that some died within days of the procedure. In one email, Yukee allegedly wrote, “invoice price 1600 charge 3900,” highlighting the markup. Another email instructed staff to “add conservative to all of them who don’t have,” referring to the documentation needed to justify the procedures.
The indictment also alleges that Yukee used the proceeds to fund a lavish lifestyle, purchasing a $594,000 Ferrari, a $158,000 Cadillac Escalade, an $865,000 Bulgari necklace, a million-dollar home in Hawaii, and a $3 million certificate of deposit. She also reportedly invested $4.6 million in a beach resort project in the Philippines. Prosecutors are seeking to recover vehicles, accounts, and real estate linked to the alleged fraud. As Nurse.org reported, skin substitute fraud has become a major enforcement focus, with high-dollar wound care billing, retroactive charting, and referral kickbacks at the center of federal investigators’ attention. Yukee has been charged but not convicted and is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.
In Kentucky, the federal crackdown continued. On June 17, 2026, a federal grand jury indicted Angela Renfro, Briana Gosnell, KLF Company, LLC, and Freedom Center, LLC for conspiracy to commit health care fraud. The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, alleges that from March 2020 through January 2024, the defendants submitted over $11 million in fraudulent and unauthorized claims to Kentucky Medicaid, with more than $10.7 million allegedly paid out. The conspiracy involved billing for services that were not rendered or unauthorized, and submitting claims using clinicians’ National Provider Identifiers without their knowledge or consent. The charges include 28 counts of health care fraud and three counts of aggravated identity theft, with maximum penalties of up to 10 years in prison per count, plus fines and restitution.
These cases represent a new era in health care enforcement, where data analytics, undercover investigations, and aggressive prosecution are converging to root out fraud. The sheer scale and audacity of the schemes—from industrialized Medicare fraud and opioid overprescribing to wound care scams and Medicaid billing conspiracies—underscore the ongoing challenge of protecting public health funds. As the government’s efforts intensify, health care providers, administrators, and patients alike are reminded that vigilance and integrity are more important than ever.